Your next visit with Meg

I'm thrilled to let you know that another visit with Meg is in the offing. Dundurn will be publishing A Cold White Fear late 2015 or early 2016. I've had a lot of fun writing this 7th book in the Meg Harris mystery series and am now deep into the revisions. I always enjoy this part of the writing process. I get to know the story and my characters so much better. In fact I usually hate to part with them, when I finally have to say good-bye to the manuscript and send it into my publisher.

This time I am trying something different. I have put Meg in a threatening situation. I wanted to push Meg, get her outside her comfort zone and see what she would do to get out of it alive. I've also brought back her young friend, Adjidamo, or Jid as most of us know him, Sergei's buddy, the boy with the impish grin.

Here's the teaser....

It is five days before Christmas and night is approaching. A major blizzard has cut off access to Meg’s isolated wilderness home, Three Deer Point. She is alone with her young friend, Adjidamo, preparing for the big event, when a knock suddenly echoes through the house... 

And so it begins. 

The fun of a book tour

I had a fabulous time on my western Canada book tour. When Words Collide was a world wind of panels and author discussions and I particularly liked the multi-genre aspect of the Calgary conference. Usually the conferences I attend are devoted solely to crime fiction, so it was a nice change to meet science fiction and romance writers. If you are looking for another writers/writing conference to attend, you couldn't go wrong with When Words Collide, usually held in August.

And of course I couldn't go to Calgary without a trip into the mountains. I spent a delightful day hiking along the shore of Lake Louise and paddling on Emerald Lake with my niece, who was working in Field B.C. for the summer. Her brother who happened to be out West at the same time joined us for dinner the night before, so we had a bit of a family reunion. It was great fun. It was also a trip down memory lane. When I was in high school I spent a summer working at Lake Louise. I won't say how long ago it was, but let's just say the hotel Chateau Lake Louise has changed a bit in the intervening years, but they still grow the Icelandic poppies in the gardens.

Vancouver was spectacular. I returned to the hotel I stayed in for my research trip for Silver Totem of Shame. And followed Meg's footsteps along False Creek, walked past the houseboats on Granville Island where she and Eric could've stayed and saw the carving studio that served as the model for the murder scene.

But the best part was meeting readers and fans at three Vancouver Public Library branches and the store signings at Black Bond Books/Book Warehouse. Living in such a large country, I don't expect to find fans in places that are several thousands of kilometres from where I live, so I was thrilled to discover people who not only knew my name but had read all my books and were dying to meet me. I had to pinch myself to make sure it was real.

Next stop in the Writing Process Blog Tour

I’ve been invited by children’s author, Rie Charles to participate in a unique blog tour on writing. Rie, and I practiced yoga together for a number of years before either of us got involved in the writing world. And now Rie is set to have her third children's book, A Hole in My Heart, published by Dundurn in the fall. Visit her website http://riecharles.com to learn about her writing process and to learn more about her and her books. You can also visit other authors on this tour by following the different links in each of the blogs. Enjoy.

And so to continue the tour, I will answer the four questions

What are you working on?

I’m trying something different with the next and 7^th Meg Harris mystery.  I’m putting Meg in a precarious, thriller situation.

After her adventures in B.C. in Silver Totem of Shame, she is back home in Quebec at Three Deer Point, the Victorian cottage she inherited from her Great Aunt Agatha. It’s less than a week before Christmas, Eric is away in Regina on Grand Council of First Nations business and a major blizzard has trapped her inside her house. So much snow has fallen that the roads are almost impassable, her own driveway clogged with two feet of the white stuff. Jid, the boy she rescued in Red Ice for a Shroud, is helping her get ready for Christmas. She is balancing unsteadily on a ladder trying to hang some mistletoe when a loud knock echoes through the house from the front door. On her way to answer it, the power goes off and she’s plunged into darkness….

Well….since I am about half way through in its writing, I am waiting to find out what happens to Meg too.

How does your work differ from others of its genre?

I write distinctly Canadian mysteries with distinctly Canadian stories. Because I love the Great Canadian Outdoors I want to bring this alive to my readers, so I have chosen wilderness settings, which tend to be less common in the mystery genre. While Meg lives on a remote property in the wilds of Quebec, she does travel to other wildernesses, as she did in my recent book Silver Totem of Shame, in which she travelled to Haida Gwaii in search of a killer of a young Haida carver.  Meg lives next door to an Algonquin First Nations Reserve, so I interweave their stories into the mystery series. I find writing mysteries is a terrific way to explore social issues. So in each of my books I explore issues related to Natives, issues, like missing native women, police prejudice against Natives, controversary between the archeologists and Natives over ancient human remains and so on.

Why do you write what you do?

I grew up on a diet of Nancy Drew, Agatha Christie, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and host of other mainly British mystery writers. I’ve been gorging on mystery books ever since. When I finally made the big decision to try my hand at fiction writing, it seemed only natural that I write a mystery.  Since the mysteries I enjoyed the most involved series characters, I decided to write a series. Thus Meg Harris was born. I named her Meg, short for Margaret, after my grandmother and Harris after the street I grew up on in Toronto. Like me, she too comes from Toronto, but apart from our mutual love of the Great Canadian outdoors that is about the only thing we have in common.

How does your writing process work?

I suppose the writing process I use can best be described as ‘writing by the seat of my pants’. I have tried outlining, but invariably found Meg sending the story in a totally different direction, so I don’t bother with an outline any more. I start with a setting, a time of year, an overarching theme, a general idea of what the story will be about and the opening scene. Since it is a series, I already know what Meg thinks and feels as well as the secondary characters. I generally pick up on Meg’s life where it left off in the previous book.

Once I have the story down in the first draft, I go through two-three revisions before sending the manuscript to my publisher. Part of the revision process includes having two to three critiquers help me see the ‘forest for the trees’. I find this a very invaluable step and invariably make key changes as a result of their observations.

I should not forget where I write. I find my writing muse at my cottage, where I can look out on the natural world that Meg also enjoys watching. The photo is of my favourite summertime writing spot inside the screened-in porch of my Quebec log cabin.

Thanks for this opportunity for me to talk a bit about my writing process. And if you would like to know more don’t hesitate to drop me a line.

Now let me introduce the next two authors on this tour, long time friend and former colleague at DMR Group, Maureen Fisher and fellow Ottawa crime writer, Mike Martin.

Maureen Fisher will be posting her writing process on June 2 on her blog http://booksbymaureen.com/my-blog/ 

Maureen is a terrific writer with a very wry sense of humour. She writes sassy romance novels containing a slice of adventure and enough steamy love scenes to drive those who to dare read them racing for a cold shower. She enjoys taking readers into another world, a world full of romance, humor, and suspense.

Mike Martin was born in Newfoundland and now lives and works in Ottawa, Ontario. He is a longtime freelance writer and his articles and essays have appeared in newspapers, magazines and online across Canada as well as in the United States and New Zealand. He is the author of "Change the Things You Can: Dealing with Difficult People" and has written a number of short stories that have been published in various publications including Canadian Stories and Downhome magazine.

The Walker on the Cape was his first full fiction book and the premiere of the Sgt. Windflower Mystery Series. The Body on the T was the second book, and Beneath the Surface is the third installment in this series. He's having a big launch at Chapters Rideau in Ottawa on May 29 in the evening. 

Like Maureen he will be posting his writing process blog on June 2 at www.beneaththesurface.co.

Be sure to put June 2nd in your schedule so you won't miss the next blogs in the Writing Process Blog Tour.

I hope you are enjoying this blog tour. Don’t forget to check out Rie Charles writing process blog and work back in time to the other blogs. You will discover new writers from many fields and revisit familiar faces.

Store signings, conferences and more

With Silver Totem of Shame now out on bookshelves, I am set to start store signings. Thus far I have Ottawa stores booked and one in Peterborough. Here's the schedule. Drop by. I would be thrilled to see you.

Ottawa

Chapters Kanata - May 23, 6:00 pm to 9:00
Barrhaven Indigo - May 24, 1:00 pm to 4:00
Chapters Rideau - May 25, 1:00 pm to 4:00
Chapters Pinecrest - May 29, 6:00 pm to 9:00
Chapters South Keys - May 31, 12:00 pm to 4:00
Chapters Gloucester - June 1, 1:00 pm to 4:00
Brittons on Bank St - June 21, 12:00 pm to 2:00

Peterborough

Chapters - June 8, 1:00 pm to 4:00

May 10, all day, I'm participating in Capital Mayhem at the Main Branch of the Ottawa Public Library. At 11:00, I'm on a panel with those other killer dames, Mary Jane Maffini, Barbara Fradkin and Linda Wiken. This is a going to be a grand celebration of Ottawa crime writing.

May 13 is the big launch of Silver Totem of Shame. I'm joined by Vicki Delany who is launching two of her recent books. It's at the Heart and Crown Pub in the Byward Market and starts at 7:00 pm. We're going to have a great bash.

I will also be attending Bloody Words in Toronto, June 6-7. If you love mysteries, consider registering for this terrific Canadian mystery conference. Just click on this to go to the site.
Sadly this is the last year for this con, so it's your last chance to mingle with Canada's crime writers who will be coming from all across the country.

And I must not forget that I will be heading out to Calgary in August to attend When Worlds Collide, August 8 -10. Since I will be out west I am also planning on going to Vancouver and Victoria for some events and hopefully Haida Gwaii. Once these are finalized I will post them.

Take care. And enjoy Silver Totem of Shame

Silver Totem of Shame Launch!

May 13 is going to be party time in Ottawa. I'm launching the latest Meg Harris mystery, Silver Totem of Shame, and you're invited. I'll be joined by Vicki Delany, who is launching not one but two books, the latest Constable Molly Smith, Under Cold Stone and a Rapid Reads, Juba Good. So if you live in Ottawa, come join us. We'd love to see you.

Contest!! Free Book!!

I'm so sick of looking at this never ending snow piling up outside my log cabin. To top it off, it's snowing right now, when it was supposed to be a bright sunny spring day. So I'm going to hold a contest. The first person to guess the date when all this white stuff is finally gone wins a free signed copy of my upcoming book, Silver Totem of Shame. The person with the date closest to the actual date wins! What could be easier than that. Just leave your answer in the comments section.

My blog awakens

As the release date for A Green Place for Dying closes in, you will be hearing more from me.  Only two months to go! I'm getting very excited. Even though this will be my fifth book I still find it thrilling to hold the newly minted book in my hand.

The reviews are already starting, with last week's review in Publishers Weekly. I was ecstatic. If you like the review I would appreciate if you could 'like' it.

Now the nail biting begins in earnest as I await other reviews. You never know.... It is always an anxious time when the baby you have been nurturing for so long is finally released into the wide world. You never know how it will be received.

Drawing From Real LIfe

I thought you would find my blog that was posted on Mystery Maven Canada this week intriguing, so I am reposting it on my own blog. It will give you a bit of insight on where I get some of my ideas for the Meg Harris mysteries. And if you aren't familiar with the Mystery Maven Canada blog you are definitely missing something. It is the go-to place to discover the latest happenings in Canadian crime writing.

Reposted from Mystery Maven Canada

         Most fiction writers draw on their own experiences and people in their life to help create their stories and give them life. And I’m no different.  While I have never intentionally based any of my characters on family or friends, except that is for Sergei, Meg Harris’s black standard poodle who is as loving and as mischievous as on my own standard poodles, I do drawn on aspects from my own life. I thought I would share some of these with you, starting with Meg herself.

Since the Meg Harris series is written in the first person point of view, readers often ask if Meg is me. Invariably I reply “No, not really”, which is indeed the case. After all she is a red head, an escapee from an abusive marriage and she struggles with a drinking problem, none of which could be used to describe me.  But like me, she did grow up in Toronto and she has a cottage.

However, while both our cottages are made from logs and are set in the wilds of West Quebec, I gave Meg Three Deer Point, the cottage of my dreams; a large turn-of-the-century timber and stone building with a turret and wraparound verandah that is perched on a granite point overlooking the sometimes still and other times angry waters of Echo Lake. That is another fun aspect of writing fiction; you can give your characters belongings and experiences that you have only dreamed about.

In the first book, Death’s Golden Whisper, Meg discovers letters and postcards written by her Great-aunt Agatha to a friend during her grand tour of Europe undertaken shortly before the First World War. I borrowed this idea from my grandfather, who during a similar European trip sent his mother postcards of his travels. As I child I spent many an intriguing hour reading these postcards and imaging what it would have been like traveling to these exotic locations.  In the same book Meg also finds a diary written by her Great-aunt. Instead of arbitrarily using any date for the entries, I used the month and day of the birthdates of various members of my family.

I also have fun with names. Meg herself is named after my grandmother. I wanted a name that could be shortened to a number of different nicknames and Margaret fit the requirement; besides I wanted to immortalize my favourite grandmother. In Arctic Blue Death, her mother’s cook calls her Maggie, the name my grandmother often went by.  In Red Ice for a Shroud she’s called by the French version, Marguerite, which incidentally means ‘daisy’.  Her last name ‘Harris’ is derived from the street I grew up on in Toronto, ‘Harrison Rd.’

In each of my books, I also make a point of naming one or two secondary characters after my various nieces and nephews. In Arctic Blue Death, I named Meg’s father and her uncle after my grandfather and great-uncle, her sister after my mother, while I gave a fictitious Arctic town the name James Lake, after my husband. And I must not forget that one of my villains uses one of my father’s names. If he were still alive I know he would be laughing uproariously.

I enjoy spending much of my time in Canada’s great outdoors and have used some of my adventures in my books.  Red Ice for a Shroud starts off with Meg and Eric clearing cross-country skiing trails, something my husband and I, along with friends, do every fall in preparation for a winter of skiing. And I do love skiing, an activity Meg thoroughly enjoys too.

Canoeing is another matter. In The River Runs Orange Meg finds herself paddling madly down a whitewater river and she dumps, which pretty much mirrors my own experience with whitewater paddling. In fact Meg doesn’t like whitewater anymore than I do, although we both love slicing through the still, flat waters of a lake. And to give you a taste of what Meg endured when she dumped on the DeMontigny River, I've added some photos from my own dump that happened on the Madawaska River a few years ago. I'm the one in blue and my husband was in the stern. I bumped over every ledge of this Class III rapid known as The Staircase until I reached calm water. I was not a happy camper.

There are countless other instances in the Meg Harris books where I have drawn upon my own experiences, but I will save those for you to discover.

Gwaii Hanas

I had so much fun sending Meg to Canada's Far North for Arctic Blue Death the fourth book in the series, that way I got to go too, that I decided to send Meg on a trip to another Canadian wilderness for the as yet untitled book 6 (I've decided silver will be in this title). Since I was going to be on the west coast for Bloody Words in Victoria, I decided Meg and I would travel to Haida Gwaii, the land of the Haida or the Queen Charlotte Islands as it is also known. As I child I would often listen to my father speak of these magical islands, his voice filled with no little amount of awe, where he had gone one summer while at university to work in one of the logging camps. So I always had a yen to visit this distant mountainous archipelago on the edge of Canada's Pacific coast.

I spent seven days with my husband, getting to know the islands and the people. Part of it was spent on a four day boat trip to the uninhabited southern part, to Gwaii Hanas National Park. I tell you, I fell in love with these wild, mystical islands and its people. And I came back full of ideas, information and photos. I can't wait to get started on this next Meg Harris mystery.

Please check  Gwaii Hanas photos to view a sampling of what we experienced.

Fun time in British Columbia

I shall be heading off shortly to the land of mountains and sea for some thrilling events and awe inspiring adventure with a wee celebration thrown into the mix.

In Vancouver on June 1, I'll be talking about my Meg Harris series and offering a sneak preview into the next Meg Harris mystery, A Green Place for Dying due out in Feb. 2012.  The event is being held at the Vancouver Public Library, Central Branch, at 350 West Georgia St. from 7:00 pm to 8:30.  I'll be joined by award winning author Barbara Fradkin, who writes the Inspector Green mystery series. If you happen to be in Vancouver that day, please drop by. We would love to see you.

And then I am off to Vancouver Island, to attend Bloody Words being held in Victoria this year from June 3 to 5. But on the way Barbara and I plan to enjoy some of the fabulous B.C. scenery by taking the ferry over to the island. On June 2, I'll be keeping my fingers crossed at the Arthur Ellis awards dinner, hoping that my favourite shortlisted authors win awards this year.

I am thrilled to be participating in 2 events at the conference. On Friday evening, June 3 at 8:30 pm, I'll be participating in an intriguing panel on Points of View: speaking from the margins. I'll be joining David Cole, Kay Stewart and George Szanto with Sylvia Warsh as our moderator. Then next day at 10:00 am, I will be doing the Mystery Cafe session, Silent Witness: landscape as character, with Stephen Legault. And of course I will be signing my books after the events.

And then the adventure begins. I fly to Haida Gwaii or Queen Charlotte Islands to do research on the next and 6th as yet unnamed Meg Harris mystery. To get a feel for these isolated mountainous islands, I will be exploring much of it from the water on a boat tour that will take me to Gwaii Hanas, the large protected southern third of the islands where totem poles of the once vibrant Haida stand as silent sentinels to the past. I will also be meeting with people from the Haida Nation.

And sometime during all this I will be celebrating a big birthday in the city of my birth and hoping at the same time to be celebrating the winning of the Stanley Cup by the Vancouver Canucks.

All in all it promises to be a very exciting trip.